


What Have You Done (Now)?

by Shamelessly_Radiant



Series: Aparecium [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 20:44:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4363559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shamelessly_Radiant/pseuds/Shamelessly_Radiant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt fic for the song 'What have you done' by Within Temptation.</p><p>One day, he'll go too far, and she'll ask 'What have you done now?' without it really being a question. One day he'll go too far, and there will be no turning back. (And still, she stays.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Have You Done (Now)?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NerysDax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerysDax/gifts).



> I dislike this one. I had the hardest time coming up with something and I feel it's rushed and sloppy but I thought to hell with it and finally wrote it. Leave me a comment telling me if you liked it? It would brighten my day!
> 
> Written for Nerys(Dax) - nerysdax.tumblr.com Thank you for the song! I loved it. The lyrics were so Tomione, and I hope I did it justice. (Though I fear I didn't)
> 
> Oh, and it is an alternate universe (AU). Tom and Hermione go to school together. They do not, however, share the orphanage.
> 
> Enjoy!

**_Now_ **

“What have you done now?“ She gasps, tears in her eyes.

He turns towards her, so, so slowly. There is panic in his eyes, and she knows he knows he made a mistake. It was not planned, not foreseen.

She should have never been here, have seen this.

But she  _has._

And she  _knows._

It is the last drop. It’s over now.

"Hermione,” he whispers, like he has so many times.

**_Then_ **

“Do you mind if I sit here?” She asks, voice soft, “everywhere else is full.”

(It isn’t, but there are redheads who frowned at her attire and a blonde boy who sneered and muttered something that sounded very much like an insult)

The black-haired boy looks up, and holds her gaze. Holds it, and holds it. Hermione, awkward, drops her eyes to the book in his hands.

“Oh, are you reading Hogwart’s a History?” she asks, excited, “so did I.”

“Did you?” he asks, and then he sighs, and nods at the seat across from him.

She sits down, twisting her hands, and takes him in. He looks small, and a bit scrawny, with dry skin and flat hair. But his face is kind of nice. Grey eyes, high cheekbones, and a straight nose.

He smirks when he catches her staring, and she averts her eyes quickly again.  _Good job, Hermione, two minute span._

“It’s Tom,” he offers then, surprising her thoroughly, “Tom Riddle.”

“Hermione,” she smiles, “Granger”

“Shakespeare?”

“Yes,” She smiles at him, tentative, and after a second he smiles back. They discuss books, a bit of mythology and magic. She gets him to look shocked once or twice, though he has studied as well as she has apparently and it is the best train ride she could ever wish for.

**_Now_ **

“No,” no and her voice is hard. No, because this is what she must do.

“I have showed you mercy one too many times, she says, drawing herself up fully. But now..,” her voice breaks on the now, and she falters. She  _falters._

He takes a step forward.

But she shakes her head, because this time she can’t deny it, can she?

(There’s a dead body at her feet and water on her shoes).

**_Then_ **

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

She looks up from her bag, where she is desperately trying to find her quill before Professor Dumbledore enters the classroom to find a boy in green and silver tie smirking at her and twirling a quill with his fingers.

“Tom!” she reproaches him, “Can I get my quill back?”

“It depends.. can I sit here?”

“.. Fine.”

“No reason to sound so unenthusiastic”

She smiles sweetly, gestures at the seat next to her, and grabs her quill from his hand. Just when he is about to say something Dumbledore enters the room.

The moment Dumbledore asks the first question, Hermione’s hand shoots up- or at least, it would, if  _someone_ was not holding it down under the desk.

“Tom,” she hisses, “what..”

“If you are always so eager to answer all the questions people will think you a bossy know-it-all. You need to play it smooth”

“Mister Riddle, Miss Granger, is something going on? Does any of you two knows the answer, perhaps?”

“.. No, sir,” Hermione responds at last, “sorry to interrupt.”

Tom smirks triumphantly the moment Dumbledore looks away, and soothes her wrist with his thumb.

Later Hermione learns he has been answering questions all the time in the lessons they do not share, and he has been leading Slytherin to a sure victory.

And indeed. Slytherin wins the Housecup.

Hermione confronts him, furious “What have you done?” And he  _laughs_  at her. “Slytherins don’t play fair, Granger. We play to win.”

They don’t talk the whole summer, but when they come back he greets her with a smirk and gestures at an empty compartment, and she smiles back.

**_Now_ **

“All those times.. I believed you. And it turns out you have been  _lying_ to me for five. Damn. Years.”

His voice is urgent when he tries to explain, his charm all fixed in place. Some part of her wonders why he is so desperate when it comes to her, but that part is overshadowed by a much bigger part.

_Spite. Revenge. Fury._

“Tom Riddle, the poor  _Halfblood_ boy bullied by his peers. So badly he had to pretend not to like me.”

He takes another step forward, and she takes a step back. Away from Myrtle, and towards the door. She steps on something and bends to take it.

**_Then_ **

“Hi Tom,” she tries but achieves the same result she has the same past months.

A blank look, a tiny nod.

A week later she drags him into an empty classroom. His lip starts quivering as he tells her the Slytherins hate him, because Riddle is an unknown name. Because his blood is probably not pure. He tells her they have done this the past three years too, but this year it is worse. Because of some first year pure-blood edging the others on.

He tells her he wants to  _protect_ her.

They agree to keep meeting in secret, because he still wants to keep in touch with her.

_A Slytherin attacks her, two months later and Tom steps in, majestic, furious, has him covering before him, asks “ **What did I tell you about leaving this one alone?”**_

_The boy, the **knight** as she learns later,  **bows** before him, calls him  **Lord.**_

_“You.. you lied to me!” She screams at him, nursing her bleeding arm, and he only urges her to stay still while he heals her. Advanced magic._

_She slaps him when he is done. Twice. When she goes to do it a third time he grabs her hand, almost crushes it._

_“What have you done?” she whispers, and he does not reply._

_She walks away, crying, and hates herself, because she knows she will be back._

**_Now_ **

“Oh,” she laughs, “This brings happy memories too, doesn’t it?”

In her hand she holds a black diary, T. M. Riddle engraved in the leather.

“Didn’t you promise me you would stop?”

“I haven’t done it,” he answers.

“No,” she says, “but only because I interrupted you.  Right?”

“I- I wouldn’t do it anyways.”

“Oh, stop lying Tom. We both know you would.”

**_Then_ **

He had told her about his legacy, about being the Heir from Slytherin, he had showed her the journal in which he kept the research he had done, in which he noted every book on genealogy he could find. Every new development.

The thing is.. he was not only researching his name.

_The book falls open, and Hermione mutters a distracted apology, picks it up._

_Her heart freezes._

_Horcruxes. He is researching **horcruxes.**_

_“What have you done?”_

_Just curiosity he tells her, smiles reassuringly. She can only nod dumbly._

_And still she stays._

**_Now_ **

“I don’t want you to be my enemy, Hermione”

“You’ll have to kill me then, Tom,” she snorts, “and yes, I would mind if you did.”

The trouble is.. he knows her too well. Can see through her. He knows she could never be his enemy.

“Don’t pretend to hate me, Hermione” he smiles, slowly, “we both know you don’t.”

“You’re right,” she shrugs, “ _you_ are the one carrying hate I don’t feel. I’m a Mudblood, remember?”

He hushes her, urgent, looks around.

She laughs, hollowly, drops the book and spreads her arms.

“What? Don’t want me to say it so you can pretend it’s not true? I’m a Mudblood, Tom, a  _Mudblood_ ,  _Mudbloodmudbloodmudblood_. Remember when you found out the first time?”

Suddenly a hissing noise comes from belowand before she can even look Tom throws himself at her, bodily.

“Close your eyes, Hermione,  _damn it. Obscuro”_

She cannot see anymore, feels him pressing into her, hears him hissing and  _cries._ Cries because he saved her, and because she wants him so badly to just be Tom.  _Her Tom._

**_Then_ **

“What about you? Have you ever thought about researching your name? I know there is a potioneer named Granger. Perhaps-”

“Oh I don’t need to,” she smiles, “I am Muggleborn. Hadn’t I told you?”

His fist clenches, his mouth snaps shut, his breathing gets heavier.

“You are a Mud- a Muggleborn.”

It is not a question, but a statement.

“Do you have a problem with that? With me being a Mudblood? That’s what you were going to say wasn’t it?”

“Have I gone too far?” he says, sounding in control again.

 _What have you done_ is on the point of her tongue, but she swallows it, because she knows.

“No,” she says, “Not yet.”

One day, she’ll say what have you done  _now._ She knows. It is like fate hates them. She has woken to dreams of never knowing Tom, even being born later. She has woken to dreams of trashing under his wand, or  _dying_ under it. Sometimes she wonders if fate got it wrong. Sometimes she wonders if they are cursed. It seems there is no happy ending in sight for them.

**_Now_ **

“Why did you save me?” she sobs, clinging to him like a baby would to his mother.

“Because I can’t lose you” he says, wiping away her tears gently, stroking her hair. “Sometimes I feel like there is a curse between us, like this was not fate’s intention. I can’t let fate win, can’t I?”

She laughs shakily. “So there is goodness in you after all.”

“There is no good or evil, Hermione. There is only power and those too weak to seek it.”

She pauses, hesitates. “I could believe that. Maybe.”

His eyes open, and he surges forward, kisses her breath away.

“I’ve been waiting for you all this time,” he says, “I won’t let you go. Ever.”

“Wait, wait. What are you saying?” she’s confused, mostly.

“You have to chose Hermione. You have to chose between staying or walking away. Between being mine or being no one’s. Either way, I promise you, we will be free when it ends.”

_She is standing at a crossroad, a dead body at her feet. And she chooses._

**_Later_ **

There’s only this now: Tom’s soft palms, his calloused fingers. His kisses and his voice in her ear.

(Her own, clear in her head)

She accompanies him to Riddle House, and kills his grandfather while he kills his grandmother. They kill his father together.

(They do not make a Horcrux. They will find another way to live forever)

There’s only this now: Tom’s soft palms, his calloused fingers. Plans for the future, power in their grip.

People whisper: “What have you done.” If they say too much, look to accusing. _Avada kedavra_. And the whispers cease.

(They are not cursed, they are blessed.)

There is only this now: freedom.


End file.
